Comics provide some of the most insightful thoughts.

If you don't read the strip Big Top by Rob Harrell, you should.
Today's strip was funny and provided me with some memories as well as being thought provoking.

In it, Kingston the Lion is taking Pete, a 10 year old boy who's growing up in the circus, to get some clothes. He asks the sales person if they have any Toughskins jeans. For those who don't know, Sears Toughskins were almost a rite of passage in the 1970s. They were probably the only article of clothing which would have been acceptable wear to attempt to survive an atomic weapon. I wore them a lot during my formative years. In "husky" size, please.

Anyway, the salesman sticks his nose up and informs Kingston that they don't carry those and why would he want them, anyway? Kingston replies that Pete wears the knees of his jeans out really fast because he's always outside running and jumping and climbing. Kingston asks the salesman what he might suggest as an alternative, to which the salesman replies "Ritalin".

It occurred to me as I was reading this strip that I didn't even know if Toughskins were sold any more. Not surprising, since I've graduated on to more grownup clothes now. (Besides, they don't make Toughskins in my size, even "superduper husky". A perusal of the Sears website shows me that they sadly are not making them any more. In fact, the only reference to them appears to be the title of a Rodney Carrington CD, "Growing Up Poor - Toughskins Jeans".

I got to thinking about why they don't sell them anymore. Is it because they're out of fashion? Is it because there are other similar and more affordable brands (which would be surprising, since they seemed to be worn typically by the poor kids)? Then the comic itself provided a tragic possibility: That today's children are so medicated with Ritalin and other similar drugs that they no longer wear the knees of their pants out by climbing around. Isn't that both sad and frightening? Did you know that Ritalin is identified by the DEA as a drug with a high abuse potential?

The first APA Diagnostic and Statistical Manual (DSM-I), published in 1957, contained no mention of anything like attention deficit disorder. It was included in the DSM-III, published in 1980, for the first time in anything like its present form. I don't argue with the fact that there are disorders out there which cause attention deficit. For those people, I think that medication may be a possible solution. But I think there are a lot fewer people (read 'children') who suffer from this who are popping pills daily. Children are interesting creatures; they are the perfect prototypes for scientists. When they encounter something that interests them whether for the first time or the hundreth time, they devote their attention to it. If that thing is outside and is more interesting than what the teacher at the front of the room is saying, guess where they're going to be looking? That's not attention deficit, that's attention priority.

Today's society is filled with more two-income families. There is little time for children to be children. Mom and dad are busy shuttling them between daycare, then to soccer practice, then to karate, then to violin lessons, then to whatever is next. They have nothing but structure in their lives. This is the antithesis of what being a child is about. They do these things because they are told to do them by their parents. And don't fool yourself: A parent saying "Do you want to take soccer or basketball or karate?" isn't a choice. The child will do something, whether they want to or not. If little Timmy says, "I don't want to do any of those things. I want to just play with my friends outside." that is not an acceptable alternative. Timmy can't play with his friends outside because all of his friends are taking violin lessons or playing soccer or basketball. Timmy's parents have something to prove to all of the other parents in the subdivision: That Timmy is a better or more active or smarter kid than any other.

My mom was a stay-at-home mom. She was there when we left for school -- for that matter, so was dad. He was a salesman who made his own schedule -- and she was there when we got home from school. No shuttling anywhere for us. I was asked if I wanted to try things out: Basketball at the elementary school. Cub scouts. Methodist Youth Fellowship. I gave them a try. I didn't stick with any of them except for MYF. That was fun. But there was no ultimatum given me when I didn't like it. There was no pressure on my parents to keep up with anyone or prove their kid was better or more active than anyone else's.

I was a lucky kid. I grew up in the country. Well, it was the country when I was growing up in it. There's a Walmart in town now. What was the country is a bedroom community now. But growing up in the country was a good deal. There was plenty of open space and plenty of room to do as I pleased. There weren't many kids around who were my age so I didn't have a whole lot of friends. But that wasn't a bad thing. I read -- a lot. I played outside. I did have a few friends nearby who would come over and we'd do all sorts of things that were fun. And we wore the knees out of our Toughskins.

Big Top is a really good comic and it has some really funny strips. But I had a hard time laughing about the message that today's strip sent. That's OK, though. It wasn't an offensive message or anything that's gonna make me want to write to the editor or anything. It was, in the end, a sad commentary on the way we treat our children today.